Mitigation tragedy

COP29 was held in an authoritarian petrostate whose leader opened the conference by proclaiming that fossil fuels are “a gift of God” [1]. Azerbaijan’s government derives two-thirds of its revenue from fossil fuels, which comprise 90 percent of the country’s exports [2]. COP29 was not the first “petro-COP”; the two preceding COPs also met in authoritarian petrostates (Egypt and Dubai) [3]. As during previous COPs, petroleum hardliner Saudi Arabia pushed its weight around, vetoing every attempt to cut fossil fuels. Adding to the sheen of petroleum over the conference, more than 1,700 representatives of fossil fuel companies were in attendance, outnumbering the largest national delegation [4]. It therefore came as little surprise that the long-delayed acknowledgment at COP28 of the need to transition away from fossil fuels was not officially repeated at COP29. This warrants emphasis: addressing the proximate cause of the climate crisis was, once again, pushed into the future. COP29 adhered to the preferred methodology of self-interested sovereign states that was formalized at COP21: dealing with fossil fuels will continue to be “nationally determined,” meaning that countries are free to burn them at will for as long as they desire.

One of the supposed successes of COP29 was agreement on rules for carbon markets and emissions trading. However, that agreement did not solve fundamental problems associated with such approaches to the climate conundrum: emissions trading allows polluters to continue polluting, and markets for emissions limitations — carbon sinks and the like — are riddled with corruption and other problems, frequently making them little more than hot air [5]. For example, even if a forest is nominally protected as a carbon sink, there is every likelihood that it will burn down in a decade or two, if not much sooner. Improved markets will result in the exchange of funds. Insofar as some of that money reaches needy countries, some good may come. But it would be foolish, given real-world experience and practice up to now, to expect these efforts to do very much to reduce global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

The failure of COP29 to get to grips with CO₂ means that the likelihood of ideally limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as agreed in the COP21 Paris Agreement, is now zero — as evidenced (if not yet proved for the longterm) by the global average temperature in the first nine months of 2024 reaching 1.54°C [6]. The more practical goal of limiting warming to 2.0°C is also almost certainly out of reach. This is not because doing so is practically impossible (although it may be). Rather, as COP29 showed, dramatically cutting GHG emissions on a global scale anytime soon remains politically impossible. Too many countries and other powerful actors are addicted to fossil fuels. The best that COP29 could manage on moving away from fossil fuels was another “mitigation and ambition work programme” [7], which is diplomatic terminology for kicking the can down the road into the fourth decade of climate negotiations.

The failure to decisively address fossil fuels and associated CO₂ emissions at COP29 is tragic given that nobody set out to cause the climate crisis. The incestuous relationship between fossil fuel producers, government officials and diplomats at the COP makes this tragedy much worse, and much more prolonged, than it would be otherwise. Meanwhile, as evidence of how far COP29 was from confronting reality, the International Energy Agency just reported that the world’s demand for oil is “set to accelerate” [8] and global coal use has reached a record high, likely staying that way for years to come [9]. The rollout of renewable energy around the world has not kept pace with growing energy demand, meaning that in global terms — the only terms that matter for Earth — the essential transition away from fossil fuels has yet to begin.

Finance farce

COP29 produced a new collective quantified goal on climate finance whereby developed countries pledged to “take the lead” in finding $300b in annual funding for developing countries by 2035 [10], triple the existing finance goal (if one ignores inflation), but less than a quarter of what developing countries were demanding and only about ten percent of what they will need [11]. Typical for COP agreements, the meaning of the COP29 finance pledge is open to almost limitless interpretation. Much of the $300 billion is to come from unspecified nongovernmental sources to be devised in the future. How much will be in grants or loans was not spelled out. Significantly, the role of affluent “developing countries” in providing climate finance to truly poor countries was left very much voluntary, a big win for China and other prosperous “developing” countries, not least Saudi Arabia and fellow wealthy petrostates, which are not obligated under the UNFCCC to provide finance. As long as China, the world’s largest carbon polluter and second largest economy, refuses to be bound by finance pledges, many longstanding developed countries will continue to resist spending more of their publics’ money on climate finance.

Recognizing the shortfall, COP29 produced the “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3 trillion,” which loosely calls on all actors, not just states, to move toward gathering “at least” $1.3 trillion per year for poor countries by 2035. If twenty-nine COPs are any indication, the chance of this amount of money being forthcoming in the next decades is about zilch. Adding insult to injury, the COP29 finance agreement does not include funding for loss and damage. New promises of money for the loss and damage fund established at COP27 were derisory relative to need, bringing the fund’s total assets to $745 million for all loss and damage among all poor countries [12], a fraction of what they suffer annually.

The heralded Baku “finance COP” was, in the end, a finance farce, revealing little international determination to fund the needs that arise from the climate crisis. This was put into context by reports that government support for fossil fuels in 2023 amounted to US$1.5 trillion [13]. This explains both where the money goes and why fossil fuel combustion is so persistent despite three decades of COPs.

Adapting to the imperative of adaptation

Not long after COP29, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that 2024 was the warmest year ever recorded, ending the hottest decade ever recorded, and he declared that the world was experiencing “climate breakdown in real time” [14]. Guterres called for “dramatically slashing” emissions in 2025. Yet, we know from experience — COP1 through COP29 — that that will not happen in 2025 or likely even before the second half of this century. Greenhouse gas emissions are still climbing. Atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ reached almost 425 parts per million (ppm) in 2024, compared to about 350 ppm when the UNFCCC was negotiated and 280 ppm at the start of the Industrial Revolution [15]. The best one can say is that the rise in CO₂ emissions is slowing and will probably peak, albeit at an extraordinarily high level, before too long. Continued climate change is therefore a baked-in inevitability and adaptation becomes the unavoidable imperative.

Mindful of this, diplomats at COP29 adopted their longest agreement: the “Global goal on adaptation.” Adoption of this goal, and the vital need for it, officially affirmed the failure of COPs 1-29 to grapple with rising GHG emissions. Yet, without dramatic efforts to lower emissions and equally dramatic increases in climate finance, the adaptation goal lacks teeth. It will be the global affluent who will adapt while the global poor will bear the brunt of climatic impacts.

After COP29, it is finally time to acknowledge that the diplomatic model that has been relatively successful in protecting the stratospheric ozone layer — negotiation of an overarching convention (the UNFCCC), subsequent protocols and agreements (e.g., the Paris Agreement), and annual COPs — is not up to the task of successfully addressing climate change. The COP process cannot and will not fulfill the promise of the UNFCCC to prevent dangerous climate change. This does not mean that COPs are worthless. They have probably nudged some countries to do more than they might have done otherwise; global warming will likely be less dramatic than it might have been. The various work plans and continuing negotiations arising from COPs are bound to do some good, including extracting more funds — far too little, but still more — from affluent countries to help poor ones. Ultimately, annual COPs are also a good way to raise public awareness and gauge what national governments around the world are willing to accept. These things are better than nothing, notwithstanding the associated tragedy and farce.